


Chauffeur to the flapper

by LostinFic



Series: Hardy x Hannah ficlets [24]
Category: Broadchurch, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Angst, F/M, First Kiss, One Shot, Teninch Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 16:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17563940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinFic/pseuds/LostinFic
Summary: Hardy works undercover for a criminal gang, the boss, an infamous gangster, is one of Hannah's regular clients. Hardy is the one whose task is to drive her to and from the appointments. As the attraction between them grows, so does the risk of retaliation from the gangsters.





	Chauffeur to the flapper

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely lots-o-huggindoctor on Tumblr who prompted "A kiss to pretend" from the [kiss prompts list](http://lostinfic.tumblr.com/tagged/kiss%20prompts/chrono) .
> 
> For UK folks, by “suspenders” I mean braces, the kind that hold up trousers, not the lingerie type.

_London, 1922_

They both pretend to be other people. He pretends to be Emmett Carver, henchman for Enzo “The Ruby” Crawford, an infamous gangster. She goes by Belle and pretends to love Enzo. 

In reality, he’s Alec Hardy, an undercover detective investigating the East End gang’s activities.

In reality, she’s… well, Hardy doesn’t know her real name and doesn’t want to learn it. That way, he can’t betray her. But he knows she’s friendly and smarter than she pretends to be. He knows she fears Enzo. 

*

Hardy went undercover a year ago. The Metropolitan police needed a copper from outside London to investigate the corruption amongst their own officers. Enzo’s gang has contacts in every police station, every branch of the government, every bank. Blackmail and bribery are the bricks and mortar of his criminal empire. He deals in illegal betting, protection rackets, black market weapons and opium. He built his reputation on cruelty: as far as Enzo’s concerned, everyone is fair game, even women and children. His nickname “The Ruby” is a reference to the colour of blood. The story goes that he loves to keep the stains on his clothes after a murder.

In the name of public protection and justice, Hardy replaced his suit and tie with rolled up shirtsleeves and steel-capped boots. Traded his police badge for the dark red suspenders symbolic of Enzo’s gang. 

They told him he’d have to work his way up the ranks of the criminal organization. It could take months, years even, before Enzo trusted him with sensitive information. So for now, he’s relegated to menial tasks: surveillance, deliveries, dodgy transactions. Hardy’s not built for intimidation, but his accent alone forestalls backtalk.

Most policemen fear retaliation against their loved ones if their cover is blown. It’s not a problem for Hardy anymore. He came back from the Great War to find out that, while he was fighting for his life in the trenches of France, Tess had fallen in love with another man. They tried to put it all behind them and rebuild a life, they had a baby, but it only delayed the inevitable: Tess left and took their daughter with her. After that, for Hardy, becoming another person didn’t seem like such a bad idea. 

One task he didn’t expect was driving the boss’s floozie to and from his home. 

Chauffeur to the flapper. 

These days, so many young women wear short dresses and makeup, at first he can’t tell whether Belle is a prostitute or fashionable. On the drive back, she counts bills, but it doesn’t mean anything either. Enzo sees other girls, of course, but Belle is his favourite, the only one he sends a car for.

Hardy watches her in the rear-view mirror. A cloche hat sits low over her blond bob and obscures her kohl-rimmed eyes. She gnaws at her bottom lip, wrings her hands in her lap. He escorts her to the fourth floor of the hotel, in the lift, she takes deep breaths. When the doors open with a ping, a smile springs on her lips. 

“Honeybear!” she says, running into Enzo’s arms.

She arrives with bright red lipstick and returns home without it, as if Enzo himself drained the colour out of her.

Hardy wonders if she once cared about Enzo. Is he blackmailing her? What does she need the money for? Does she have other clients? And he wonders why he wonders about her so much.

They’re long car rides; she lives on the other side of town. But he comes to appreciate these moments more than any others. She sits in the back and therefore cannot see his face. He can relax. Somewhat. 

She’s friendly to everyone from members of the gang to the hotel staff. Hardy’s grumpy attitude doesn’t deter her. It starts with small things, a kind smile, a funny comment on the latest Chaplin movie, a snack shared. “Did you bake those scones yourself?” he asks. She laughs and it fills the whole car. The tunes she hums that haunt him all day (“Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?”). The shine of her sequined dress against the drab backseat of the model T’s interior. 

One day, he finds out she’s lying about where she lives. She forgets a novel in the car, but when he tries to return it to her, he finds she’s not a tenant in the building where he drops her off. He doesn’t try to find out her real address. The less he knows and all that… She doesn’t want anyone in the gang to know where she lives. _Smart lass_. 

He gives her the book back later, and she immediately notices he’s read it. “What did you think of Poirot?”

For a second there, he panics, thinks she’s asking because she knows he’s a detective. “Too intelligent,” he answers carefully.

“I hope this Agatha Christie will write other books. Have you read Evelyn Waugh?”

They begin exchanging novellas and paperbacks, a book club of their own with little notes in the margins like coded messages. He tells himself it’s innocent, yet he hides the books carefully.

He eats some of her taffies. She drinks from his flask. 

When she’s in a hurry, she changes outfits while he drives. She adjusts her garter straps when she knows he’s watching in the rear-view mirror.

He pays her a compliment. Her hand brushes against his in the elevator. 

“Laters,” she says with a wink when they part ways. And he watches her hips sway, heart in his throat, as she walks down the hotel corridor to meet Enzo. 

Theirs is a friendship built on things unsaid, on averted gazes, on lingering nothings. It’s fog. Unsubstantial, yet it can swallow the whole city. 

Maybe it’s a test. A trap. Set up by Enzo himself. It’s plausible. More than. But he’s pretending to be another man, so he might as well pretend he’s the kind of man Belle could be attracted to. 

Every day, he awaits the request to fetch her with a knot in his stomach: dread or eagerness, he can’t tell. 

He drives slower. Stops fully at every sign. Offers to wait if she has errands along the way. 

Now, when he stops in front of her fake house, he kills the engine. They share a cigarette and companionable silence. 

He never invites her to sit at the front. He needs the physical barrier between them. To keep rumours at bay. To control his own yearnings. 

It’s one of those days, when it seems winter will never end, that she tests the boundary. She leans forward, elbows atop the back of the front seat, chin rested on her hands. Very close. He keeps his eyes on the road and his hands firmly on the wheel, but he’s acutely aware of her proximity. Her perfume isn’t light or floral or sweet, it’s tangy, raw cocoa and smoke, linens tangled in heated bodies. It’s raspy like a tongue along his scruffy jaw. He swallows thickly, squirms on his seat. She brushes something off his shoulder. Her fingers linger on the worn out cotton. The first human touch in months that’s not a shove or a jab. His blood fizzles. 

“Sit back, it’s not safe,” he says. 

“If you really cared about my safety, you wouldn’t take me to him.” 

Her anger isn’t directed at him. It’s unwarranted, but it cuts him deep. He halts the car on the side of the road.

“You only have ask,” he says, eyes trained on the windshield. 

He’d lie for her. He knows it with blinding clarity.

“But if I didn’t go, then I wouldn’t see you,” she says.

He arm dangles over, on his side of the car. An offer. An overture. 

His heart pounds in a way it hasn’t since the trenches. A flush creeps up his neck. He brushes the back of his fingers down her skin, from elbow wrist. He grazes her palm. Their little fingers wrap around each other. 

If he drove away, who would find them? 

“Emmett,” she says softly. 

She doesn’t even know his real name. None of this is real, he tells himself. Then why is it so hard to let go of her hand? 

“Maybe another time,” she says. “Keep driving or we’ll be in trouble.” 

He hates himself for pressing on the gas pedal. 

She leans over every time now. Always near, forgiving. 

Hardy’s superiours at the Metropolitan police think she’s valuable. She might know something, sensitive information overheard or confessed by Enzo in a moment of post-orgasmic weakness. “Befriend her,” they say. He doesn’t want to use her, doesn’t want her mixed up in this. If the police act on knowledge revealed by Belle, and the leak is traced back to her, she would pay the price dearly. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her,” they say. But he has no faith in their words.

Inevitably, she does reveal something to him.

The car is parked in front of the house that’s not her house. She smokes the last of their shared cigarette and flicks it out the window. Normally, she’d leave now, but she stays. She runs a finger under his collar, as if smoothing it. He slopes down, rests his cheek on top of the seat, mirroring her position. She’s so close, his vision blurs, but he’s too tired to make his eyes focus. 

“I won’t see you next week,” she says. 

“Why not? What’s wrong?” 

“I mean, ‘cause Enzo will be in Bristol.” 

“Right.” 

“It’s like a vacation for me.” 

“What will you do?” 

She shrugs. He wonders if she’ll propose they meet. There’s a moment of silence, a pregnant pause, a crossroad of possibilities. 

“Anyway.” She chuckles nervously. “Maybe I’ll learn to cook.” 

“Lord have mercy.” 

It’s only the next day, when the effect of her touch and smile has somewhat faded, that he realizes the significance of her words. If Enzo is in Bristol, he may be trying to create an alliance with the gang up there. He should warn the police right away. Yet he waits. Waits for someone else to mention the trip, but no one at his level seems aware the boss is out of town. 

The next day, he’s asked to fetch Belle, and he thinks it’s too late to alert his colleagues now. But when she comes out of the hotel, her hair and lipstick are intact. She got paid to sit by herself in an empty hotel room. Obviously, they’re doing everything to keep the illusion the big boss is still in London. If word gets out, they’ll narrow down the list of suspects real fast. 

Unaware of Hardy’s inner turmoil, Belle is in a great mood. As soon as they round the corner, out of sight, she wraps her arms around his neck from behind. Her breath brushes his ear when she says, “take the scenic route”. 

Driving by Hyde Park is the closest thing to a scenic route London has to offer. They stay in the car, they can’t risk meeting someone they know. He drives around three times, and, through the window, they watch springtime London blooming to life: sheep graze on the lawn, children run, pushing old tires with sticks, young female factory workers stroll arm-in-arm. 

Belle’s hand slips inside his shirt. His heart drums under her touch. He nearly crashes into another car. 

He drives until the sun descends on the horizon. 

It’s the happiest he’s been in a long time, but the dilemma eats at him. An alliance between London and Bristol means a wider network of criminal activities— wider than ever before— and more innocent bystanders caught in that web. But they’re faceless, anonymous bystanders whereas Belle is so very real. She’s flesh and bones and loveliness. Her life would be on the line. His too, he realizes belatedly. 

In the end, his conscience wins. He’s a cop, not a crook. He sends the superintendent a coded message and waits with fear in his heart.

The next week, he’s sent to fetch Belle again. As usual, he escorts her to the fourth floor, but he keep his hand poised near the butt of his revolver. This time, Enzo shows up to welcome her. 

“Hello, Babydoll.” 

She jumps in his arms. “Honeybear! I missed you.” 

Hardy grits his teeth and ignores the pang in his heart. He’d have preferred a bullet. 

Rather than go back to the pub that doubles as the gang’s HQ as he usually would, he stays nearby. He sits in the service stairwell, attentive to any sound out of the ordinary.

A few hours later, she comes out, and one glance from her tells him she’s unwell. A tense silence fills the elevator, it’s not the place to talk. 

In the car, she rests her forehead against the window and follows the path of raindrops with her finger. 

Did they question her? Threaten her? 

“You alright?” 

“Yeah… I liked my little vacation.” 

“What happened?” 

“Enzo was pissed. Something happened, and he thought I’d said something I shouldn’t.” 

Hardy gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. 

“I didn’t even know what he was talking about. What could I have said?” 

He hates the hint of doubt that creeps up his spine. The paranoid voice that asks: does she really not remember what she revealed about Bristol or is it a test?

“After a while, he believed me. I think. But then he wasn’t… as nice as usual.” Her voice is thin, vulnerable.

Anger flares in Hardy’s chest, and he punches the car horn. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not exactly. But I’m just, really—” She rubs up and down her own arms. “Can I come to the front?” 

He parks the car in the shadow of a tall oak tree. She’s out and back in in a flash. 

His whole body is still taut with anger. She slides closer on the seat, and it’s restraint now tensing his muscles. 

“It’s okay, Emmett, don’t be shy.” 

It’s not shyness, it’s survival. Full of hesitation, he stares at her. She’s so beautiful, and she needs him. A lump rises in his throat. 

“Can I get a cuddle? Please.” 

He thinks of the hand-grenades he used during the war. 

He breathes out slowly, and opens his arms. He’s pulled the pin, there’s no going back now. 

Seven seconds before the explosion.

She snuggles up to him, head on his chest, arm around his torso. His blood sparks to life. 

Six. 

He tightens his embrace around her. Holds on to her. Protects her.

Five. 

His thawed heart swells against his ribs. Warmth spreads out from his chest. 

Four. 

Belle tilts her head back, gaze searching his face. She gently wipes the hair off his eyes and cups his cheek. 

Three. 

He rests his forehead on hers. Ragged breaths mingle between them. 

Two. 

Her lips brush against his. 

One. 

He captures her mouth. 

Zero.

And they kiss. Desperately. And they pretend this can end well. 


End file.
